AlГ№, then at the University of Texas at Austin, and his collaborators, demonstrated the cloaking of a three-dimensional object using radio waves. He has conducted pioneering research in the field ever since. A few years later, experiments demonstrated actual metamaterial cloaking, and Scientific American proclaimed: вЂњInvisibility Cloak Sees Light of Day.вЂќДЄlГ№ started working on metamaterials in 2002, when he spent a year at the University of Pennsylvania as a visiting student.

Thirty years later, in 2000, a team of scientists was able to demonstrate negative refraction in a metamaterial for a certain frequency of electromagnetic radiation. But no materials featuring this property were known, and some scientists believed none would be found because negative refraction might violate widely-used equations describing the propagation of light. A pioneering theoretical step dates back to 1968, when a Russian physicist wondered if a phenomenon called вЂњnegative refractionвЂќ might be possible. WellsвЂ™ novels to Star Trek and Harry Potter. вЂњInvisibilityвЂќ has long been part of our popular imagination and science fiction, from H.G. By bending light in unusual ways, we can actually realize highly unusual optical phenomena, like enhancing or suppressing the reflections and scattering of light from an interface, making a small object appear much larger, or conversely, even disappear altogether, by hiding it from the impinging electromagnetic waves.

This engineering at the nanoscale allows us to change the ways in which light refracts as it enters a metamaterial. It is a phenomenon called вЂњcloaking.вЂќ AlГ№ continued: Some can be engineered to interact with light in such a way that they may actually make objects disappear from sight. Metamaterials feature many different geometries of at the nanoscale. In metamaterials, we make up our own molecules-we call them metamolecules. We can understand this as the collective excitation of molecules and charges in the material, produced by light. One of the most basic phenomena in optics is light refraction, which describes the change in direction of propagation of an optical beam as it enters a material. In a recent interview with the New York Academy of Sciences, AlГ№ explained a core behavior of light that is at the heart of his research: This work has led to many honors, and this year the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists is recognizing AlГ№ as its 2021 Laureate in Physical Sciences and Engineering. вЂњWe call them metamaterials, which push technologies forward, to realize optical properties, electromagnetic properties, or acoustic properties that go well beyond what nature and natural materials offer us.вЂќ вЂњWe create our own materials, engineered at the nanoscale,вЂќ explained AlГ№, who is Director of the Photonics Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center at the City University of New York (CUNY). Enhanced wireless communication and computing technologies, improved bio-medical sensors, and invisibility cloaks are just some of the achievements of his lab. So he engineers new materials that appear to violate some well-established laws of physics. This yearвЂ™s Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists Laureate in Physical Sciences and Engineering creates materials that manipulate waves in ways that were once thought impossible.ДЄndrea AlГ№, Ph.D., City University of New YorkДЄndrea AlГ№ isnвЂ™t satisfied with how light waves and sound travel through objects and space. Metamaterials and Photonics: Challenging Laws of Physics for Better Data Transmission, and Invisibility Cloaks, Too! By Roger Torda | NYAS | Oct.

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